From 1% to 4%: How Carissa Erzen Rebuilt Her Email Foundation and Finally Knows Her Audience

Allea Grummert (00:12)
Hey there, welcome to Happy Subscribers, a podcast that explores how bloggers and content creators can create more purposeful relationships with your audience through email marketing. I’m Ali Grimert, email marketing strategist, copywriter, email platform expert, and founder of the Done For You Email Marketing Agency, Duet. I started as a personal finance blogger in 2016 and have since helped hundreds of bloggers and creators like you maximize your email marketing for more impact, more traffic, and a better connection with your subscribers.

Be prepared for some advanced email talk as well as tactical tips to help get your valuable content into the hands of your audience faster and easier. I’m excited you’re here, so let’s do it. We can create a deeper, more meaningful connection with the community you love and serve through email.

You’re gonna meet Carissa Erzin. She shares recipes for authentic German cookies, cakes, breads, and pastries. Growing up in Germany as a kid shaped her worldview and she gets to share that through her blog, Humbly Homemade. I met Carissa last fall and we’ve worked together on a duet email marketing project together. Carissa, thank you for joining me today.

Carissa Erzen (01:20)
Thank you so much. I’m so excited to chat with you.

Allea Grummert (01:23)
Me too. Guys, we scheduling busy schedules. That was hard. But we got here and I’m so excited. The day is finally here. And Krista, before we dive in, is there anything you want to share with listeners that they might not know about you? You think might be in help helpful for them getting familiar with you?

Carissa Erzen (01:40)
Hm, yes. So definitely German baking has is my roots. but right now I’m really trying to grow on the gram. And so everything over there right now is Fukasha, which is really interesting. We can talk about I did an a Fukasha opt-in with your opt-in you did you made for me, do I made for me as the template. And so that’s really exciting.

Allea Grummert (02:05)
I love it. so yeah, Krista and I w she worked with me and the team earlier this year or whatever. And so it was through a project called Ready Set Email. And Krissa, do wanna explain kind of what the process looked like, just so that people kind of know what we’ve done?

Carissa Erzen (02:23)
Yeah, so we worked on several different things. First was setting up the welcome series, which I did not have and I didn’t know I like was supposed to have. And it’s obviously optional, but I don’t think it’s optional anymore because that really is what made my audience get to know me and like build trust with me and learn.

that I’m gonna be sending you emails and every time you open it, my personality is there, but there’s also a ton of value in it for them. And so we did that.

Allea Grummert (03:02)
Yes.

Carissa Erzen (03:06)
There was a lot of back and forth with your amazing team, like your writers and your VAs and all the tech people answering all my questions about like, wait, how does this work? Like, can we make can we tweak these random things that nobody’s ever gonna care about, but I care about them. They’re like, absolutely. So your team is amazing. And then after that we worked on a new five day series that is the opt in. And that was all about bread baking.

Which again was so eye opening to see how your writers write the copy. Because I was just kinda like willy nilly, you know, banging it out. But the way that they explain it and the way they put my voice and personality in the emails, I was like, that sounds more like me than me, you know? It was so exciting to see. And so then I was able to use that template for future templates. So I feel like it’s

The gift that keeps on giving, you know, like the investment was worth it a million fold. And then finally we also did the cold subscriber calling automation, which was a huge game changer.

Allea Grummert (04:21)
Yeah. So well, I love hearing that you enjoyed working with my team. I’ve always like told them, I’m like, guys, we can’t be so precious as to like think that everything we do is perfect on the first try. And and it makes our jobs like way less stressful because we kind of right we tee up the copy of like, here’s what we’ve come up with. Make whatever edits feel good to you. how did that feel like getting the copy for the first time?

Carissa Erzen (04:46)
It was really

It was just like, wow, somebody actually took well, it seemed like they took the time to read through the copy that I had already put on my website and capture the like vibe I was trying to convey and exactly the feeling that I wanted my audience to feel with every email and then made it like promote my best recipes and share my experience with people and build that trust in a way

that I never could have done myself. And so we tweaked like very minimal things. It was more just like, can we make the button here or can we put a border here? Or let’s switch out this recipe for that one. Yeah.

Allea Grummert (05:32)
Yeah. I love that. So just for the listeners, we have a part of our process called the copy prep phase. it also like from the very beginning, we actually have a new project questionnaire where we like ask all sorts of things. Like, what do you want people to think, feel, do, all this? And then during copy prep, we’re actually taking the strategy that we’ve come up with before we write the copy to like ask Carissa, ask our clients, like, what do you feel like is the most important thing that you want to be for everyone to know about you? Like we get to dive into more of those details.

So yes, we don’t just like read our clients’ minds, but we like ask try and ask good questions and do that research. And it Chris, it just makes me happy that it sounded and felt like you and that you that the copy wasn’t like a surprise. You’re like, this is this is how I had hoped it would turn out.

Carissa Erzen (06:21)
Yeah, yeah, definitely.

Allea Grummert (06:23)
I love it. tell me more about kind of the template for creating new opt-ins. Like what did you learn about yourself in the process creating the another one?

Carissa Erzen (06:33)
There was some kind of back end things that you and I on our call, I was like, Well, why is it, why don’t we send the extra email to get them to confirm with the opt-in? Yeah. Like, ’cause you have the code subscriber calling automation, like just you know, like why why do double double duty, you know? And so that like little things like that taught me how to set up a productive and efficient opt-in.

But then even just the header, like learning from you, let’s make it really captivating, like a hook. Like let’s make it a question, not just twelve recipes, free PDF. It was like, so the one that you helped me make was like, what if you could make foolproof bread, you know, the first time. And so now the one that we have is what if one dough could be breakfast, dinner, and brunch, something like that.

Or brunch, dinner and dessert. And so it’s like getting the the direction of where to put my creative energy rather than just trying to throw something up and then wondering why it’s not converting.

Allea Grummert (07:43)
Yeah. I love that. it just makes me happy, like that yeah, you can see kind of the patterns of maybe even how we wrote about your brand. What are what are some of like the thoughts, feelings, words that you feel like really captured your brand that maybe you wouldn’t have thought before?

Carissa Erzen (08:02)
Yeah, the word foolproof, like you guys added that up and I never would have thought to add that because I like that’s what the doughs are. They’re always like three or four ingredients. You can there’s like three different ways you can make it depending on your schedule. If you happen to leave it a couple extra hours, like it’s no big deal. It’s really it really is foolproof, but I never would have thought to convey it that way. And so it’s just these little or like cozy, rustic.

Like all these little words cherish, hug, you know, omas from Oma’s kitchen.

Allea Grummert (08:39)
Mm, yeah. And like I just wanna say like that sets you so much further apart than especially AI, right? AI is not gonna like have memories of Almost Kitchen or have tested the spread itself to know that it is foolproof. Right. So it really shows your humanity.

Carissa Erzen (08:59)
It’s important nowadays, for sure.

Allea Grummert (09:02)
It is. It is. And as even as much as AI can like try, it can’t be Carissa.

Carissa Erzen (09:08)
No.

Allea Grummert (09:09)
What do you feel like are the parts of your welcome sequence that you’re most excited that people hear from you right away? People who’ve never met you before.

Carissa Erzen (09:17)
I mean it is really exciting to tell people my backstory that like I grew up in Germany so a lot of the flavors or the recipes themselves come from that and so they know this is somebody who’s like sharing her, you know, childhood memories, her family, generations passed down of like her oma in the farmhouse rolling out the strudel dough. I get to make that like that

feels so much more intentional than just, here’s like whatever, a recipe, let me try it out and this person just whatever. And then you just move on with your day. It feels more personal.

Allea Grummert (09:58)
I love it. Have you had people reply back to you when they join your email list?

Carissa Erzen (10:03)
Yeah, they never replied back before and now I’m getting replies, which is so exciting because I’m like and so there’s people in like France who will be like, yeah, we moved here and you know, we really love you know, we wanna try the blackbread or somebody will email, Hey, do you have like a Christmas stolen recipe? And I’m like, Here you go. And so that’s really fun to actually talk to the people who are like making the recipes and who want

more of what I’m baking.

Allea Grummert (10:36)
Girl that gave me goosebumps.

Carissa Erzen (10:37)
Ha ha

Allea Grummert (10:38)
Like you’re showing up in people’s kitchens with them. Mm-hmm.

Carissa Erzen (10:43)
Yeah, which is so fun.

Allea Grummert (10:45)
So fun. And then how does that impact you when you go to write new emails now that you’ve kind of got some stories and some names of people who are on your list?

Carissa Erzen (10:53)
Yeah, now now I can think like, okay, when I’m recipe developing or even like way before like figuring out what to make, it’s like where are the gaps, you know? like what do people want that they already like? And then maybe how can we add one more thing that kind of rounds out the collection? Or it sometimes people even ask like, Hey, can you make like the Danube wave cake? And I’m like, All right.

I’m gonna try to figure that out.

Allea Grummert (11:25)
Yeah, they’re like it’s giving you what they call like a content flywheel of like the more you ask, the more you get ideas, the more you can create. And that’s like one less decision you have to come up with. Like they’re taking that they’re just telling you. And yeah, of course you always get the choice to say, No, I don’t want to. But what a fun would you say that like makes it even more creative? Like now you have a creative challenge just to go how to like figure figure out how to make that recipe.

Carissa Erzen (11:51)
Yeah, ’cause it’s really it can be really disheartening when I’m just making things and I don’t know if anybody’s making it, you know. I’m like just like putting it out into the void. But when people are, I made this, my husband loved it, do you have any now that are like with a bit of a thinner crust or in a loaf pan? And then you know, we can like connect or some people will say, I have arthritis

So I use a bread machine. What are your tips for like switching this to a bread machine? You know, so that’s fun. And so I think I want to put in polls to my email too, because those get even more rep responses, I’m sure, than hitting reply if it’s just a poll like, here’s four ideas, which one do you want? And then go from there.

Allea Grummert (12:43)
I love that. Even if you were like, here are here are my next three recipes, which one should I do first? Yeah. And you’re like, you’re gonna make all of them anyway, but you just like publish it based off of what people have told you. it’s an easy way. That’s fun. let’s talk about your list engagement. So you mentioned kind of like people like replying and maybe getting them to click through a poll. But what have you seen now that you have your welcome sequence set up?

Carissa Erzen (13:13)
I’ve seen so when we first started when I decided to work together, my subscriber count had just passed a thousand, but my open rates and click rates kept going down. And so I was like so confused and like just trying all the ways to get people to open and click the emails, but it wasn’t working. And so after we called the email, it dropped in half, and I was like

my goodness, that’s crazy. Then

Allea Grummert (13:44)
That’s a lot.

Carissa Erzen (13:45)
I know. I think then the new subscribers, because now it’s back beyond what it was before we cut it in half. And the new subscribers is all getting the welcome series. So now the open rates are like in the 30%, which was higher than it ever was before. And the click rates are also higher than it ever was before, because I think people know

Me, so when they see my name, they’re like, yeah, that’s the girl who does like rustic bread, German bakes, a few cinnamon rolls, focus in there. Like, let me see what she has now, because they know me instead of just it’s you know, you don’t like I always get a bunch of like Creighton Barrel and IKEA and all these stores in my email and I don’t open them, but if it’s from a friend that I know, of course I’m gonna open it.

Allea Grummert (14:36)
Yes. And like you’re their creative friend who’s like creating these things for them to try. They know they can trust you. They know what it’s about. Like there’s so much knowing there that comes from that introduction in the welcome.

Carissa Erzen (14:51)
Yeah.

Allea Grummert (14:52)
do you remember what your like when you say open rates have improved, that’s for your broadcast emails, right? Yes. Yeah. So like your regular newsletters. Do you kind of know what your average click rate has gone up to?

Carissa Erzen (15:04)
Yes, I wrote it down. On average with the broadcasts, it’s around like three to four percent. And before it was like so low, like one percent.

Allea Grummert (15:19)
That’s incredible for three and a half to four percent for broadcast emails are like very rare. Usually they’re like in maybe a two percent range. nice. Yes. So I think a few things impact that. Obviously, the welcome sequence. That does more heavy lifting than like I mean I could yammer on about it all day. But you’ve said it too, like that relationship building, that knowing all of that. And then also keeping your list clean. So dear listener.

I have not forgotten you’re there too. So what we did is we actually set up an automated way in kit so that as people are joining the list, if they don’t engage after a certain number of days, they get a re-engagement sequence. If they still don’t engage, they just get unsubscribed. So that’s where I told Krissa, we don’t necessarily need a double opt-in for your freebies. Like if you’re running into a spam bot issue, go by all means go turn it on. Keep those bots from joining your list. or kit can go clean them out as well. But

Essentially, because we have that cold subscriber cleanup happening on the back end, we know if someone’s joined and not engaging that they’re going to get removed. And so that can be 30 days, that can be 60, 90. 30 days is fairly conservative, which I would say probably makes sense if you don’t have a double opt-in. Like we could could keep that real tight so they’re not on your list for very long, impacting your deliverability. So that’s exciting. So that means that the people on your list, Krissa, are people who really want to be there.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Currently opening and clicking. I love it. let’s talk about I’m curious because how long have you been blogging? Will you remind me?

Carissa Erzen (16:57)
Yes. I started in January of twenty twenty. So what is that, six and a half years? Six and a half years. But the first year was a wash because I thought blogging was like the movie Julie and Julia. Did you ever say that?

Allea Grummert (17:11)
No, I just personally but I see Meryl Streep in my head. I know she’s in it. Yeah.

Carissa Erzen (17:16)
I was just posting recipes from other cookbooks. So I had to like remove all those when I was like, wait a minute, that’s

Allea Grummert (17:22)
Not

Carissa Erzen (17:23)
right.

Allea Grummert (17:25)
Wait a minute, I have to come up with these for myself. When did you decide it like Okay, so at that point I’m so curious. The deciding to become a recipe developer, what was that thought process? Were you like, Well, I guess that’s my next step I gotta try? Or

Carissa Erzen (17:40)
Yeah. I was like, well I guess I can’t just put other people’s recipes. I need my own. So then I started like well, I had to get good at baking and cooking first. Like my dad taught me when I was a kid to make some basic things, but then I bought literally textbooks on bread science and then like learned how to calculate the baker’s percentage, like hydration and salt and like

watched all the YouTube videos about like rising, proofing, cold proof, like everything. So ’cause I wanted to actually add value and make things again that are foolproof, you know, even if nobody’s touched dough, if they make it, they’re not gonna waste their time and ingredients.

Allea Grummert (18:28)
Okay, big news, I am hosting a free live workshop just for you. If you’re listening to this, you are invited. It’s a fun one because it’s actually called My Team Roasted Me.

With love. Learn from my email mistakes and refresh your strategy in three steps. I built my current welcome sequence in 2019 and it served me really well for a long time until all of a sudden it feels like it doesn’t serve me. My business has shifted, and now my welcome sequence and strategy just feels stale. So I actually had my team dig into my email setup.

Just like we do for clients. So you get to come to this live workshop and see what I change and what you might need to update as well.

Join me for free on September 16th at 12 p.m. Central. You will get to spot the places that you’ve maybe outgrown your own welcome sequence, get ideas for how you can revive your welcome sequence, decide if segmenting is worth it for you and your list, and ultimately invest one hour into this evil marketing channel, the one that you actually have the most control over.

Please come join me. It’s Wednesday, September 16th at 12 p.m. Central to get the registration page, opt-in at duet.co/slash roasted. And when you do that, you also get my free email refresh self-audit. So you get to ask yourself a handful of questions before we even meet. As always, we will include the link in the show notes so you can RSVP and see you in a couple weeks.

I’m so impressed. I’m so glad I asked that question. Wow. That’s incredible. And then tell me because you didn’t have to go develop that skill in order to develop a blog to make it an income someday. So what was it about blogging that like you decided to stick with it and like dive in and learn all these things? Was it how was that going to impact your life?

Carissa Erzen (20:20)
I saw the impact it could have if I made it work. I don’t know if you have ever seen Molly Ye blog or she’s been on Food Network. She has several cookbooks out now too. sh I saw I read literally her entire blog, like years of blog posts before I started mine, because her writing her

was so fun and so personality driven and her recipes always have this like fun creative twist and she’s living in the Midwest so it has a lot of these like salad but it’s like you know, fruit and yogurt and cookies. So it’s so fun. But I saw her getting trips to Ireland from Carrie Gold and things like that. So I was like, well, that’s amazing. Let me do that. And then a couple of years go by and I’m like, this is a lot of work.

But it’s still so rewarding. So I just saw what was available if I made it work. That’s what drew me in.

Allea Grummert (21:22)
I I that just d have you gone to Ireland yet? I’m trying to figure out like have you what does that look like? How much of that has come to fruition for you? Even if it’s not a trip to Ireland, but like how much has your life or lifestyle changed because of the blog?

Carissa Erzen (21:37)
Yeah, I mean no paid trips yet, but like paid being paid to develop recipes for other brands or make content for them or even like just being able to not have to go to an office anymore because I had a job that I absolutely was not a fan of and I get

Allea Grummert (21:59)
Such a great way to put it.

Carissa Erzen (22:00)
to do what I want to do and it’s

like a lot of it’s boring and a lot of it’s hard work, but it’s at the end of the day, like I’m so excited to work the next day, you know? And so yeah, the lifestyle too that comes with owning your own business, as you know, you can kind of tweak it a little more than if you had set hours where you had to be somewhere.

Allea Grummert (22:27)
Yes, absolutely. I’m curious then, so when did you decide that email, like on the scale of all the things that a food blogger does, wh why was it that you reached out to me last fall?

Carissa Erzen (22:41)
Yeah. Well before that, for several years I had heard from so many really successful food bloggers and creators that email is the is the thing that you own. Like you can grow on social media, but you don’t ever own that. But email is your curated audience of people and they’re the most likely ones to buy from you if you ever sell anything. And I wanna have cookbooks and merch and the whole kit and caboodle someday. And so

I was like, okay, well, let me get email going. And then it was, yeah, a couple years of just kind of sporadically sending things. And then I got more of a process to send the new recipe emails and a few roundups. And so that was going maybe one email a week. But I had just I had maybe a four month old at the time when I reached out to you. And

Allea Grummert (23:36)
Yes.

Carissa Erzen (23:37)
I was like, I can’t do this anymore, like

Again, my subscribers are going up, but my open rates, click rates are going down and it’s getting really frustrating and I wanna do more with email, but I don’t have the capacity. I just need to work with like the best of the best and ’cause I mean if Food Blogger Pro like promotes Ali, I’m like, Okay, well that’s who we’re gonna work with. No question.

Allea Grummert (24:01)
you’re so sweet.

Well, and like so then what we came in and what we did was really like set you up with some like like an updated foundation, right? Mm-hmm. And give you a new opt in and make sure your list is like keeping itself clean. What did that do for you like mentally and emotionally? Like once it’s done, how did you feel? Yeah.

Carissa Erzen (24:24)
I mean like a huge weight was lifted off my shoulders because now it’s exciting to write new emails for people. Whereas before it was like probably nobody’s gonna read it, barely anybody’s gonna click on it, you know, because the goal one of the goals too is to drive traffic back to the blog to get that ad revenue. And so now I can actually see when I send out a new recipe email, that post does a lot better.

better even with like traffic and Google rankings because I’m getting those signals through email that people are opening it and interested in it and reading it.

Allea Grummert (25:03)
I love it. And then I mean, choosing to outsource is also kind of like it’s kind of tricky. There’s a lot of questions. You’re like, are they gonna do what they say they’re gonna do? How do I know if it’s gonna sound like me? Like what questions did you have before meeting with me or working together?

Carissa Erzen (25:21)
I mean the biggest one was is this gonna move the needle? Like is it gonna be worth it? Am I gonna, you know, make this like time and investment and it’s you know, that’s the biggest fear I think is it’s not gonna make any difference. But it made all the difference.

Allea Grummert (25:41)
I love it. So, like what is your email strategy? Like your sending schedule, how often you’re writing emails? What does that look like now?

Carissa Erzen (25:48)
Now whenever a new post for a new recipe goes out, I send an email. So usually those goes out those go out on Tuesdays. Right now I’m doing more recipes. and so those go out like Tuesdays, Thursdays, sometimes also Fridays and Saturdays. And I haven’t seen any decrease in opens and clicks or even like unsubscribes doing more emails. So I’m like, okay.

Great. If you like the recipe, open it. If you don’t, that’s okay. And then roundups, I will do those a couple of times a month. Usually like two to three times a month on Sundays.

Allea Grummert (26:31)
Yeah. What have you learned about your audience from these emails? Have you learned more of what they like, what they don’t like, what they’ll respond to?

Carissa Erzen (26:42)
What’s

been really helpful is I will download the insights from kit and then I will put it in like Claude and then be like, tell me exactly what this data is telling me. Because now I have data that’s accurate to my subscribers, whereas before I don’t think it was, so that wouldn’t have been helpful. And so now I can see like, okay, people are gravitating more.

towards Apple this time of year. So let’s do some more Apple recipes because it can go, you know, back and see like what people are opening this time of year for the past couple years. Yeah. And the other fun thing is in the email series that you guys created, I added a few tags. So if people click on one of the German recipes, they now get added into the German only series. And so like if they want that

And they tell me by clicking on one of those, then they get more of that. But if they aren’t interested in that, then they don’t get it. And I also segment them segmented my list, which I never would have done before, ’cause again, it it just didn’t feel like my audience was my audience. It was just a bunch of people who never opened emails.

Allea Grummert (27:55)
Yeah, you’re like, who is even here? Who is even here? So we have this segment for people who are interested in German recipes. Is it that and no one else? Or can you explain what segments you’re kind of working with?

Carissa Erzen (28:06)
Yes, so there’s that one and then there’s people who only want the roundup, so just a couple of times a month. And then people who only want the new recipe emails. So that’s maybe one to two times a week. And then people who want everything and they get everything.

Allea Grummert (28:21)
Everything. how was the learning curve on knowing like I I believe we built the segments for you. So you kinda had like, this is who’s in here and here, but what did how was what was the learning curve in figuring out which audience gets which email during the week? That’s a lot of kind of back and forth for you. How are you keeping that straight?

Carissa Erzen (28:42)
well your blog posts are so helpful.

Allea Grummert (28:46)
I love

Carissa Erzen (28:47)
It it was so and there’s even some like screen records that you’ve done that I just like I open kit in one window and then I open your screen record or your blog post in the other and I just do exactly what you say and it works every time. Like it’s that so that’s how I’m doing it.

Allea Grummert (29:05)
I just want to like shout out for the old blog posts, man. I had so much energy into those. Man, I love a throwback. Cause yeah, I haven’t really published on the blog as much as when I started this podcast. So that makes me really happy that that’s helpful. Because the reason why we often like I don’t ever I don’t necessarily discourage against segmentation. We just want it to be smart segmentation that makes it easy for you to keep on top of it. Because so like if you were like you have all of these four segments and people who don’t want nuts.

And people who are free or something, like then you really have to like twist your mind into like who does this go to, who does this skip? Whereas I love that because most of yours are based on like preference of frequency and type of email. And then the German one is super easy because you’re like especially do you have that set up as a a nurture sequence automation, the German recipes?

Carissa Erzen (30:00)
what do you mean by nurture sequence?

Allea Grummert (30:02)
Like an automation. Do you have like a long automation that they get dropped into?

Carissa Erzen (30:06)
Yes. Yeah. Like one of the visual automations. Yes.

Allea Grummert (30:09)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yep. And then they go into that sequence where that sequence just has German emails. So and they would only get it if they get that tag, which I love. So it’s like it’s one less email you need to be sending on a weekly basis to make that audience happy. And all of your German content is just like queued up and ready to go as soon as somebody opts in.

Carissa Erzen (30:31)
Exactly. And speaking of visual automations, I didn’t even know I was supposed to use those until your team was like, Hey, we set up all these visual automations, including for the German, you know, nurture series that I had for years and I was like, we’re supposed to and so it was even things that I already had set up that Duet was helping to optimize, which was, you know, just yeah, huge, huge like

Burden off my shoulders and makes everything run more smoothly.

Allea Grummert (31:05)
That’s so good to hear. And part of it is because like there’s just so many different ways you can build stuff in kit. So what we like to do is make sure as much as we can take off like the mental load of like everything lives as a visual automation and it’s named like this. So you’re like, was that a rule? Does that rule trigger a sequence? Like, does that tag trigger a sequence and it’s happening under rules and not automations like, my gosh, that’s too much. So just to be able to go in and look at automations and be like, I actually know where this situation might live.

And you can open a couple and be like, I found it. That’s where it is. And so I’m glad to hear that that was helpful. Cause that’s the kind of stuff that, like, you know, it’s not on a proposal. We’re not like, and we’re gonna make your life easier by simplifying how you look at your kit. Like, it’s not sexy. That’s not what people come necessarily looking for. But for me, that’s like how we care for you and how we hand it off to you. So that it’s it’s not just like, we built this thing, come ask us anytime you have a question. It’s like, I mean, you can.

We just also don’t want to be a bottleneck if we can empower you to use your system well.

Carissa Erzen (32:06)
Yeah.

Allea Grummert (32:07)
Yeah. You feel empowered?

Carissa Erzen (32:09)
I do.

Allea Grummert (32:11)
Like flex your muscles, be like, I’m so powerful. okay. What would you say what’s like the biggest win over the last year with your email marketing? Even if you’ve already said it, maybe you want to elaborate.

Carissa Erzen (32:27)
Yeah, I would say really ’cause the main goal again right now is to get that traffic to the blog because that’s the ad revenue is my primary like the biggest source of income. And so seeing that increase or seeing even like I said the recipe posts rank better in Google because people are clicking through in email and it’s so, you know, Google everybody’s getting those signals.

That has been such a game changer ’cause again, you can rely on social media to do that or other avenues, but email’s the one that I own and n so nobody can change an algorithm or something like that.

Allea Grummert (33:11)
Yeah. I love that you’re able to send four emails out a week and the people are not unsubscribing. And probably because you have these segmentation preferences where they can say, I just want less. I just want fewer emails. That makes me so happy because the more emails you can send, the more traffic. Even if you’re sending it to a smaller audience, it’s still more traffic.

Carissa Erzen (33:32)
Mm-hmm.

Allea Grummert (33:32)
Yeah. And I want to applaud you. I’m gonna do it right now. Because yeah, and I love seeing that like your momentum went from like

kind of feeling stalled out. What do I even do? I don’t know who’s even here. To getting that all fixed and refined and getting you a process in place to see, I mean, I love getting to hear even in your voice, how excited you are to be emailing your list and knowing who they are, that they’re replying, they like what you’re sending. I mean, I’m just seeing wins all around.

Carissa Erzen (34:03)
I know, yeah. I feel like another big win is that data actually tells an accurate story. And so I can use it to then create things that perform well, you know?

Allea Grummert (34:15)
Yes. Also, before I forget, Krista, I because you’re using Claude, kit has a connection with Claude. So you don’t actually have to download your data anymore. You literally just ask it.

Carissa Erzen (34:27)
What? It has an integration up.

Allea Grummert (34:29)
Yes. it just launched over the summer. So go add that in. It’s going to blow your mind. You can ask like I even had a I asked like which type of email performs better, the one where it’s more of a narrative or the one where it’s like short suite with bullet points and a link. And it was like, Well, you don’t really have a ton of data on the one, but they both seem to be performing the same. And I was like, Great. So I don’t need to like waste energy trying to figure out that. as far as like

wondering if it’s gonna perform. It’s like, I don’t know, we just need more data. Try it again. And that’s one way. You could even have it like tag all subscribers who clicked this link in the last six emails. And I’m pretty sure it would do it.

Carissa Erzen (35:07)
wow.

Allea Grummert (35:08)
So there’s your quick win for the day. That’s gonna I’m about to send you down a rabbit hole. So but yeah, definitely like maybe search like threads or I don’t know where people talk about this if it’s on Twitter, but like see how people are using the kit MCP. They also have it on their website, kind of all these different kind of prompts you can use, like a whole prompt library. So yes. No no more downloading insights. They can just tell you directly and yeah.

Keep me posted on what you find out. If you find out cool prompts or skills, let me know.

Carissa Erzen (35:43)
That’s so fun. I love dissecting the data. So that’ll be fun.

Allea Grummert (35:48)
And I mean you can even ask it like based off of the last six months or who’s joined the list in the last six months, what content seems to get them the most excited? Mm-hmm. And then I don’t know if it can do that or not, but it’s worth asking. So yeah. You could even ask like, what’s the average length of that someone stays on my list? Or how yeah, just ask it. Ask it those I’m gonna go with scientific questions, these analytical questions. yeah, and play around with that. So

Well, thank you so much for your time, Krista. I know you have a family to get back to, so I appreciate you spending this time getting to share with us your story and your experience. Is there anything else I didn’t ask about that you feel like is important to share?

Carissa Erzen (36:31)
I think we I think we got it all. Yeah. Just thank you so much for you and your amazing team. Like it’s been way, way better than I could have thought. And it’s been a lot of fun too.

Allea Grummert (36:44)
I love fun. One thank you for trusting us. That means a lot. and I’m glad that you’ve had a really good experience and excited to see where you’re going with it. As we wrap up though, where can I send people to follow along with you, Carissa?

Carissa Erzen (36:57)
Yeah, I hang out a lot on Instagram at Humbly Homemade Bakes. And then there’s also my site. That’s where all of the recipes live, as well as the opt-ins, if people wanted to look at those.

Allea Grummert (37:12)
We would we’ll include those in the show notes for sure. Anywhere else.

Carissa Erzen (37:18)
That’s kind of it. Like, you know, people can email me. duh. I have a YouTube channel. you guys made a whole extra email in the welcome series ’cause I keep forgetting to promote it. I just got monetized too, which is exciting. But I post science backed bread baking tips there without confusing jargon. And so it’s yeah, we have a whole community over there of bread bakers of varying skill levels. Let me just

Do nerd out on bread science.

Allea Grummert (37:50)
I love that. And now I have ideas for how you should incorporate that in your newsletters if you’re not already. But thank you so much for your time, like I said, and for trusting my team to take good care of you and your brand and to set you up for success. I’d love again to hear that you’re thriving.

Thanks so much for listening to Happy Subscribers in our conversation about email marketing today. I hope you feel inspired to take action, even if it’s a small change, so you can more confidently share your valuable message with your community through email. Special thanks goes to my team who makes it possible to produce and share these episodes with you. Seriously, thank you guys. If you want to hear more email marketing tips, strategies, and success stories to help you develop deeper, more meaningful relationships with your email subscribers, be sure to subscribe to Happy Subscribers so you don’t.

miss an episode. If you have a few seconds, I invite you to share this episode link with a friend or post it on social media so your peers and community can benefit from it as well. And if you have a few minutes, I’d appreciate if you’d leave a written review of the podcast, since that helps more people hear about it. And I believe we need more creators sending more valuable emails to their audience with more confidence. If you want to reach out to me directly, the best way to do that is to join my email list through one of my top freebies listed in the show notes. You’ll get regular emails from me that are packed with value and if you hit

Reply to any of those emails, it’ll land in my inbox, and I can’t wait to chat with you there. Until next time, let’s Duett